About

Contemplating people surrounding me and the life I am living, I ask questions of cultural conflicts and religious mis- conceptions. These questions are morphing into different forms and transmitting into different mediums every time.From art installation and live performance to designed objects my concepts are sometimes ironic, other times are serious, or can be simply humorous.My work does not indicate answers for these questions. For they may not have black and white answers, but they are certainly shaping my world.

My Story

It is hard to pinpoint an exact key moment when I began questioning who I am and what identity do I reflect. For me it seems like an accumulation of incidents and experiences that slowly appeared on the surface to reveal a question that I am still trying to answer today. For me, the subject of cultural identity was a personal quest for meaning before it was professional or academic. Growing up in a rather conservative community, I started questioning what defines culture, and what could be defined as religion. I am Muslim, I wear hijab, but my lifestyle looks a lot similar to a picture in an IKEA catalogue. Should I accept it as a representation of my identity? Or do I need to change it?

As an artist, I found myself expressing these thought provoked in my work. Being a strong believer that art can express things that cannot be communicated, I find in art a salvation and a “breather” to say what I want to say in a friendly medium. Cultural conflicts and religious misconceptions in the Arab world was provoked in every work I do, I was very curious about how religion became so “selective” in the some communities, especially towards feminine issues. My frustrations saw the light through an online Zine which took me all the way to Bangalore, India to speak about it in TEDx. (see video below)

Being interested in knowing more about cultural discourse in Islamic societies took me towards the path of academic research. I felt being in education should give me the privilege of being a part of generating force of change, perhaps it is a slow force of change...

So here where I am now; a designer/curator, a PhD candidate and many things in between!